


After Winter Must Come Spring

by marginalia



Category: Iron-Jawed Angels (2004)
Genre: Community: femslash07, F/F, Technically RPS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-12
Updated: 2007-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 09:39:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10241753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: The difference between them was that Alice believed all loving was a choice. What held them together was that Lucy knew better.





	

They met in a London police station, two expatriate suffragettes. It made for a fantastic story, and in the years after, Lucy told it best. Alice may have been the natural leader of the two, but Lucy was the one who could really talk. Alice would pretend to be embarrassed, but would get caught up in the laughter just the same as everyone else. Lucy never told it the same way twice, and that was half the fun.

It was certainly far better to tell than it was to live. Sometimes Alice wondered if she'd have continued, if she'd known then that it wouldn't be the end of the imprisonment, the hunger strikes and the forced feeding, the ongoing patronizing and torture and violence inflicted by those clinging to what little power they had left. Always, though, there was Lucy, her fingers warm on Alice's wrist, or her head bent over notes for the coming week, or even just an image of her, bright and strong when Alice closed her eyes, and the question was gone.

Alice, ever unaware, strove to be the woman Lucy believed she was.

::

They worked with the other militants, of course, but almost immediately they met themselves, alone, inseparable. They fed off each other's energy and passion, traded stories of protests and imprisonment before they had met, and shared strength during ones to come. Lucy's charm tempered Alice's steel, her sense for organization supported Alice's leadership, and together they were a formidable team.

Already the half-expressed thoughts of one could be clearly understood by the other. Silent cues and tiny signals made up the secret unknown language of them.

::

Alice returned to the United States first to work on her PhD while Lucy stayed working with the militants in England, but two years of letters back and forth across the Atlantic kept the connection alive. There was something particularly freeing about it; words scrawled onto paper to be read in the unknown future were both less real and more true than anything they could have said to anyone around them.

_We need you here,_ Alice wrote. _I need you here._

_Find us a decent place to live,_ Lucy replied, _and I'll be there._

_Come and we'll find it together._

Lucy's tea cooled, forgotten at the corner of her desk. There were plans to be made.

::

In Washington DC they set up housekeeping, finding rooms that could double for office space until they had enough financial support to separate their life from their cause. As if, Lucy suspected, Alice could ever do that.

Other girls attempted to set them up with assorted brothers and cousins. Lucy went rarely, finding no one worthy of her time. When Alice went out, Lucy stayed home, and when she returned Lucy would tease her with impressions of the young men, flawlessly and gently mocking the nervous versions of themselves they had presented at the girls' door.

"It doesn't matter," Alice said. "I couldn't love them anyway."

"Of course you couldn't. They're idiots, and you scare them," Lucy said, keeping it light as always. "And you'll never find anyone you love as well as me." She grinned to make it safe, though something inside her twisted at Alice's answering smile.

::

These are the things Lucy loved best about Alice: that she pretended to be unafraid until it became true, how she hated surprises, and the smooth line of her throat when she held her head high, which was often.

These are the things Alice loved best about Lucy: her stunning red hair, her scathing impressions and easy laugh, how she challenged Alice's ideas about herself, and that no matter how lost Alice got, Lucy could always find her.

The difference between them was that Alice believed all loving was a choice. What held them together was that Lucy knew better.

::

"It's not finite," Lucy said, seemingly from nowhere one quiet evening as they sat editing sections of the paper. Alice looked up, puzzled. "If you let someone in, the heart expands. It doesn't mean you care for the cause any less. And don't say you like being alone. No one likes being alone."

"I'm not alone," Alice protested. "You're here."

Lucy opened her mouth and closed it again, then stood, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders, and walked out of the room.

Alice found her smoking out on the porch, back to the door, all emotion hidden in shadows. Alice stayed in the doorway, leaning her head against the frame. Everything was suddenly and unexpectedly heavy tonight. "Luce," she said, and stopped.

"It isn't enough, and you know it. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. Don't lie to me and make me think I'm the only one feeling this." The normal jest was gone from Lucy's voice now, all her words tight and forced, but bound with truth. "The walls here are thin," she said, quieter now. 

Alice's face flushed in the darkness as the words hung between them. She considered and discarded response after response. _I'm not as brave as you... Could it hurt the cause?_

"They think it anyway," Lucy said, naming the unspoken fear. "Some of them. So there is the judgment without the joy." She shivered. "So there. I've said it." She put out the cigarette, and turned to go back into the house. Alice caught her wrist and held her fast, and Lucy turned her face away.

"I'm sorry," Alice said. She had too much to say and not enough words at all, so she reached up and caught Lucy's chin, turned her face back, eyes glittering in the dark, and kissed her softly. "I'm sorry," she said again, brushing Lucy's tears away with her thumb. "I'm an idiot. And I'm terrified of you." 

Lucy laughed, despite herself. "Come back inside, you idiot."

::

They could go anywhere. They could go somewhere where no one knew them. They could go to New Zealand or Norway or Russia or back to England or even up to Canada. They could go somewhere women had the vote; they could go and live and dream and love. They could do it; they were bright and resourceful. They wouldn't have to fight any more.

But fighting wasn't a choice. It was who they were, together. They had set their hands to the plow as one, and though the end of the row seemed far away, they would not put it down now. 

They would work on as one, fighting until victory and beyond the horrors of the darkness yet to come, until the sun shone on the cause and the stars fell down around them.


End file.
